Jorge BARRADAS (1894-1971)

Jorge Nicholson Moore Barradas was born in Lisbon in 1894. He died in 1971.

His predilection for drawing was used by the family doctor as an argument to convince his mother to register him at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa (Fine Arts School of Lisbon), which eventually happened in 1911. At this point he abandoned his technical course at the Machado de Castro School. Eventually he would also leave the course at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes, unsatisfied with the teaching practices there. It was in the streets of Lisbon that he learnt to be a truly free spirit “without handcuffs or shackles”. Painters of lavatories and other everyday objects inspired him– in their violent colours and ornamentation. The work of engravers also influenced him, and he acquired decorative and modeling skills within this field.

In 1911 he met the director of the publishing company Sátira, Joaquim Guerreiro, who took him to the Lisbon’s A Brasileira café, introducing him to the city’s artistic hub. In the first exhibition of the Grupo dos Humoristas, 1912, he showed eight drawings. He was then seventeen, and the youngest and newest of all the exhibiting artists. He was also part of an attempt to bring about a renewal in graphics, inspired by various international publications. The exhibition’s critic, Nuno Simões, already saw in the young Barradas’ work the artist of the future, recognizing his penchant for elegance and romance, his ingenuity, and skillful observation.

The 1910s and the 1920s were marked by humorous drawings and advertising. As seen  in a series of anecdotal drawings produced for the hat shop A Elegante, as well as in the packaging for the products of the Companhia Nacional de Moagem products (National Cereal Company), and the famous Nacional cookie boxes.

He participates in various publications such as the magazines ABC and Ilustração, even creating a comic newspaper with the writer Henrique Roldão. On August 15, 1919, the first issue of O Riso da Vitória was published, but run ended a few months later. He was also the artistic director of the ABC a Rir, later ceding this position to Stuart de Carvalhais. His work is often compared to that of his contemporary, António Soares, though in opposition to the latter’s aesthetic formalism. Aside from Art Déco and Art Nouveau influences, the critic José-Augusto França has also identified a curious resemblance to the work of Beardsley and Olaf Gulbransson, of the Simplississimus magazine.

Most of his stories have the same protagonists, typical Lisbon inhabitants such as the beggar, the drunk, the nouveau-riche, the newsboy, the seamstress, etc. However, the female body was what he represented most often, the artist’s intention being to pinpoint the existing “types” of Lisbon women. The three most common were the petit bourgeois woman, the working-class woman, and the Bristol Club employee. Their faces allowed expressive play; some of them are entitled Masks. His covers for the ABC magazine reveal the paradigm of the 1920s desired modern woman, who made the effort to keep up-to-date by European standards an seen in Desenho Original para a Capa de Revista ABC, n.° 84, February 16, 1922 (CAMJAP).

His painting follows his humorist oeuvre. He uses a strategy that appealed to the idea of a “serene modernism” as desired by Antonio Ferro (Minister of Propaganda). An example of this strategy is the painting that decorated the Bristol Club in Lisbon, where a rural figure is portrayed with a wine jug in her hands, somewhat absurd for the place. Something similar happened with the painting that decorated the Brasileira café in Chiado, Lisbon, completed around the same time. He developed a fixed formula for these canvases representing costumes and customs, for which Artur Portela bequeathed him the title “Malhoa 1930”. In 1930 he took the initiative to re-launch his iconographical strategy in the overseas colonies. He took a tour of the African circuit to collect memorabilia, sketch costumes, and to make notes of “types”, something that he had already done on a previous trip to Brazil. The results of his African trip were works such as Paisagem Tropical, 1931 (Tropical Landscape), now in the collection of the Museu do Chiado, Lisbon, where he gives his impression of the island of São Tomé.

Barradas achieved enormous success in ceramics in the 1940s and 1950s. His first contact with clay was probably in 1936, resulting in portrayals of washerwomen of his typical Lisbon, reinforcing the existing relationship between his various artistic domains. In 1949 he won the SNI Prize “Sebastião de Almeida”, for his ceramics.

He also worked with Portuguese tile or azulejo, and his work in this medium is one of the best examples of the attempt to reinvent it. His contribution to architecture was cited as an example for other artists by the architect Keil do Amaral.

CARLA MENDES